I am interested in finding an 'older' version of the Raspberry Pi. Seems the cost would be less and for the project I am after, I don't need much power. I am interested in building this: https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/ham/HamClock/

On the 'desktop' tab, there is information about needing Raspberry Pi. This looks like a neat little project that is doable for someone that is handy and can figure things out but not a full on programmer.
Is there a source to locate 'older' Raspberry Pi versions? I want to be able to hook this up to a 1080p or 4k monitor for this information.

They still make the Raspberry Pi Zero and I think it's around $15 brand new.

A Pi Zero 2 would definitely itself fit the bill but you would might run into IO problems if you are looking into a plug and play with a monitor. Only real issue I can think of. It has a mini HDMI port and there are adaptors for monitors but it's been fiddly every time I've tried. Which has been once, to be fair and the problem was probably in said adaptor setup. I've fought many battles with adaptors and cabling over the years and have finally reach the point of, "just don't do it if at all possible". You really can't go cheap if you want consistent top performance and paying for that extra middle management will get into the price of a full blown PI 5 anyways.

But the Zero 2 run about $15 and worth a try for sure.

Hamclock takes about 20minutes to boot on a pi zero due to minimal ram am it has to swap. The reality its its finicky about monitor resolution, its only scales to a few hard coded resolutions. If you really want run on a zero I would at least get a pi zero 2w.
I probably have some 3's and 4's email in profile or dm I may see it.

Because you say that you want to hook it up to a 1080 or higher resolution, I would go with a Pi 4. The 4gb model should be ok. If the $20 more for the 8gb is not a big deal then you may want to go that route. It will allow you to run the 64 bit os more smoothly and have a little headroom to have the pi do additional things in the background if you like.

I skimmed over some of the website. Ham Clock has a limited number of supported resolutions (800x480, 1600x960, 2400x1440, and 3200x1920). Those are funky resolutions and you may need to enter those in manually along with a lower framerate such as 24 or 30 to use less resources.

The cool thing about the raspberry pi platform is that they have just about every kind of accessory and case you could imagine. You can get a case that has full size HDMI ports and use an ssd versus an sd card.

With Amazon Prime days starting tomorrow, it may be a good opportunity to get a case with a fan, sd card or ssd.

Thanks for all of the info. I'm completely ignorant of this stuff but I'll do some reading. In the interim I tested out WSL and Ubuntu and ran the software through it. It took a bit but it started running. Kinda buggy and it hangs up a lot. I may have to test an older distro version. In the mean time I'll check out amazon day and raspberry pi stuff.

It turns out a company called Innovato sells a pi-like unit that runs Hancock exclusively and I guess you can run other stuff on it. It's 49 bucks and ready to go so I guess I need to decide if I want to spend twice as much on a raspberry pie for the ability to do other stuff with it. Things to ponder….

FWIW, The FAQ says a 4b 1gb (or Zero W) is a good place to start - the older Pi's may not have enough horsepower.

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If you don't have a Pi yet, I would start with a model 4b with 1 GB RAM. The smaller Pi models such as Zero W will work (see FAQ 56), but the 4b is definitely more responsive. Many places sell Pis or you can see the official list of vendors here. Pis are a little hard to find now but a current list of vendors with stock is here.

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Microcenter in Houston and Dallas have the pi zero w for $8 in stock now, but it uses mini HDMI and mini USB so you will have to buy adapters to plug it directly into a monitor and keyboard. After buying the adapters you almost at the cost of a pi 3 b+ which is $35, but they also have the 4 on sale for $40.

That being said, you could probably just install Ubuntu inside of virtual box on your desktop and install it there.

I might have an OG Pi in a box somewhere if interested, can see about finding it

EDIT: I'm an idiot. I can access it by its name…hamclock.local. This will suffice.

I think I have it working on a temp loaner but one thing id like to do is have it run headless. My software is accessible via web page and id like to do that but only from inside my own network.

However, I don't want to have to figure out what the pi network address is and since it will change when it's powered off, how can I give it some name like hamclock.pi.thing and be able to type that into a browser on my network and have it be found no matter its actual ip? I feel like this is some kind of ddns for my home network I need but I'm not smart enough to know more.

Example: this is how I access it right now anywhere in my house (not my actual ip, just an example)…just punch this into a browser.

http://192.168.1.120:8081/live.html

But the ip can change if I turn it off and I won't know it. So how do I make it so I can just type in: http://hamclock.pi.thing:8081/live.html and have it know to go figure out the actual ip and display the page?

To be clear, I don't want to or need to access this webpage outside of my house and home network.

You should be able to assign it a static IP in your router utilizing the MAC address of the pi. There should also be a way to set a static address in the pi, but it is preferred to have the router handle managing IP addresses.

Ya a dhcp reservation is probably what you want. Configure your dhcp service typically on your router with the device's mac address and the ip you want associated with it.

Edit: misread your post

You should be able to see the raspberry pi on your routers admin page. Also at least in my home network I can ping devices by their hostname so if the hostname is raspberrypi you can ping it and pull up any webpage using the host name I lieu of an ip but I am not sure if that is a default thing all routers do.